Your Eyes to the World of Soft Pastel Art
Featured Artists
Featured Pastel Artist: Dianna Ponting
Jan 25th

If you are a soft pastel artist it is very unlikely that you haven’t come across Dianna Ponting. Dianna is an award winning Canadian artist and lecturer who excels in soft pastels. She is an elected member of the Pastel Society of America and holds Senior Signature status in the Federation of Canadian Artists.
Dianna’s use of light, shadow and her ability to denote texture results in nothing less than a stunning art.
Dianna is an international artist and pastel instructor with students and patrons in both North America and Europe. If she comes close to your place don’t miss her. The list of workshops can be found on her website and you can join her Facebook fan page.
Dianna is a regular contributor to Wet Canvas and the first time I saw her work I was overwhelmed. Her ability to make realistic paintings is hard to match. You can try out her licorice candies lecture on Wetcanvas.
Featured Pastel Artist: Liz Haywood-Sullivan
Jan 15th
Liz Haywood-Sullivan, PSA, is a traditional representational artist specializing in pastel landscapes. Her paintings are defined by strong contrast values and graphic compositions and often feature the interplay between man and the environment, with buildings, roads, and signs often working their way into her imagery. She spent 18 years in design and since 1996 she has worked as a professional pastel artist, art educator, and community arts organizer. She lives in Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts, USA along the New England coast where she finds much of her subject matter.
She teaches workshops nationally and internationally and you can find the schedule here. She is on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Pastel and is a vice president for the North River Arts Society. She holds Signature Memberships in the Pastel Society of America, Connecticut Pastel Society, Academic Artists of America, and the Pastel Painter’s Society of Cape Cod. Her paintings have been juried into numerous major national shows and have been featured in The Pastel Journal, American Artist, Southwest Art and American Art Collector magazines.
Featured pastel artist: Karen Margulis
Jan 3rd
With the New Year and as a start of this blog I’m starting to present some of the fine pastel artists I met on the internet. The first presented artist is Karen Margulis
Karen Margulis received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Florida but started to seriously paint in 2005. Since then she has been creating a daily painting and posting it to her blog every day. Karen estimates that by now she has used and covered about a mile of paper! She paints primarily in pastels.
Painting en plein air is her passion and she goes on location whenever she can. These outdoor painting experiences help give life to her studio work. She likes to finish a painting in one sitting so that she can capture that flash of inspiration which attracted her to the subject. Karen lives in Marietta, Georgia, USA, where you can attend her continuing classes and workshops and visit open studio.



Barbara Benedetti Newton

